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Thursday, July 7, 2016

The World/Inferno Friendship Society at the Bowery Ballroom

Jack Terricloth

In 1994, the band Sticks
and Stones ended in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Seeking a fresh start in
music, the band's front man, Pietro
Ventantonio, moved to Brooklyn, New York. Renamed Jack Terricloth, in 1996 he started the World/Inferno Friendship Society, a punk band that would integrate
sounds of contrapuntal fugue, swing, cabaret, tango, waltz, New Orleans funeral
march and just about everything else. Terricloth has been the only constant
during the collective's 20-year history. The World/Inferno Friendship Society's
sixth and most recent album is 2014's This
Packed Funeral.

As with very World/Inferno Friendship Society concert, tonight's
performance at the Bowery Ballroom began
with the band's percussionists pounding on drums like a marching band, at first
slowly, and then faster, igniting more enthusiastic revelry among the fans,
until Terricloth strolled onstage, bottle of wine in hand. Under dim red and
blue stage lights, Terricloth was a sight from a noir vaudevillian nightmare,
with pale white skin and thinning hair against a dark suit, cufflinks jutting
from his sleeves and spats peeking from his pant legs and white shoes. He came
to entertain, but also to be entertained by his rabid fans pushing for space to
pogo by the edge of the stage. This anarchy was lightened with comedy, with the
band performing complex genre-defying rockers with titles such as "Let's Steal
Everything", "I Wouldn't Want to Live in a World without Grudges",
"Addicted to Bad Ideas" and the closing "Zen and the Art of
Breaking Everything in This Room." Terricloth frequently knelt at the edge
of the stage to touch fans while crooning in a talky manner into an
old-fashioned microphone. Terricloth was more ringmaster than vocalist, and turned
the concert into a raving punky party.